Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin is a national cemetery for the Irish, established in 1832. It is the final resting place of over a million people, including many famous and distinguished Irishmen.
Right next to one of the cemetery gates is a pub with the charming name ‘The Gravediggers’, founded by John Kavanagh in 1833. Kavanagh had a knack for business, because not only did he open a bar that attracted mourners and served the gravediggers who worked at the cemetery, but he also bought the land around it to prevent any potential competition in the immediate vicinity.
The pub is named after the cemetery workers who were so keen to use its services. So keen that the main gate was eventually moved to another location, and a special window was made in the pub’s wall through which gravediggers could order beer by knocking on it with a shovel. Today, the pub’s guests are mostly tourists visiting the cemetery.
However, James Joyce does not mention The Gravediggers in his famous novel Ulysses although one of the characteristic scenes – the funeral of Paddy Dignam (Episode 6, ‘Hades’) – takes place in Glasnevin Cemetery.
‘The O’Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him. (…)
Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland’s hearts and hands. (…)
How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed. As you are now so once were we. (…)
The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again. Enough of this place. (…)
Thank you. How grand we are this morning!’
In the pub itself, part of the action of the novel Dublinesque by the Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas takes place.
The story follows Samuel Riba, a retired Spanish publisher who loves books and worries about the decline of the literary world. He travels to Dublin with a few friends to hold a mock funeral for the ‘Gutenberg era’ – the age of printed books – inspired by Ulysses and the work of James Joyce.
While in Dublin, they visit real places linked to Ulysses, including ‘The Gravediggers’. Vila-Matas uses the pub as both a real setting and a symbol – a place between life and death, past and present – which suits a story about endings: of people, books, and times gone by.
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